Dead & Gone
by iCarly1969
Summary: It used to be just a game.


_This was just an idea to rewrite one of my original works to make it into a fanwork, and then this happened._  
 _What you'd need to know: It's after Blood of Olympus, Reyna got married and picked up a new hobby with Nico._  
 _I had so much fun writing this, and I'm honestly not sure what it says about me, but, well. Enjoy!_

Disclaimer: I do not own anything Percy Jackson related, as I am not Rick Riordan. First thing first, the gender is already wrong.

 **Dead and Gone**

It used to be just a game.

In fact, it was one that Sebastian had fully supported. He would pour over the newspapers or inquire discreetly, helping her find a wedding, before going with her to pick out the dresses and driving her to the venues.

 _(On the night of their wedding, he had given her a piece of polished obsidian. Don't break it, he warned. What you'd be left with would have edges sharper than razors. She doubts that it could be sharper than some of the weapons she had encountered, but she took care regardless, keeping it nestled whenever she slipped it into her pocket, her purse when there's no pockets available.)_

There were three things she always carried with her, three reminders, three momentoes, three items she wouldn't let anyone else have, because they were important.

 _(The night before their wedding, Nico gave her a locket. It wasn't small, but it nestled nicely in the palm of her hand, and it opened to reveal a tiny vial of liquid and a handcrafted miniature of a dagger the length of her thumb, made with a mixture of celestial bronze and imperial gold. There was also a whistle made from stygian ice. He shrugged when she glanced at him inquiringly. She laughed and straightened up - "He's a mortal, Nico, he's not a threat. I can take him down without that." Nico snorted at that, looking away from her._  
" _Just be careful, Reyna."_  
 _A moment of understanding passed between them when their eyes met again, because she knew, and - she can't help softening her gaze, just like he can't help stiffening and raising his metaphorical hackles in response. The tension was dispelled when Leo knocked on the door and poked his head in to ask if they'd seen his screwdriver, and, after they'd sent him away, Reyna carefully replaced the items inside the locket and tucked it away._  
" _I still don't like him," Nico declared eventually, watching her warily._  
 _After a pause, she replied with a simple, "I know."  
She wanted to defend Sebastian, she should have, but she knows him better than anyone else - both of them, really, and she can't fault him for not trusting Sebastian. In the end, there was nothing more to say, was there?)_

She had given up on love, really - Jason was her sky, until suddenly he wasn't, that night she had dressed up for the first time, for him, just to realise that he was gone, taken, and the next time they met, he had a girlfriend and he didn't know her and she didn't know him, not really, not anymore, and then there was Percy, just like his sword, the riptide that dragged her underwater and drowned her, taking her completely unexpectedly and sweeping her off her feet, before dumping her, soaked and miserable, alone, on the shores, because, of course, Percy had someone, too.

She was fine with it - she'd accepted that she'd have to give up something for this chance to make her mother proud, and Nico had it so much worse, and it's not like she needed any boy to validate her anyways.

 _(She'd given up on love, but Sebastian made her believe again.)_

He was twenty and there and she was sixteen and shattered when they first met. He had his whole future ahead of him while she was lost, wrung out after two wars, too much responsibilities on her shoulders and too much blood on her hands, scrambling, searching desperately for the home, the family the warmth the innocence she lost long ago.

 _(She never used to stop and wonder why Nico helped her instead of try to talk her out of this when he found out. They were both broken in their own ways, she understood innately, and maybe that was why everything went wrong - she was broken, yes, but Sebastian wasn't.)_

The game always begins the moment she steps into the venue, the first time she catches the groom's eye. Depending on how well they do on the initial test, it could be over as soon as it began.

Or it could last until their last night together.

 _(It took one to know one, she realises - Nico was the only one who took one look and just knew. It helped, she supposes, that he was the one who found her, not Sebastian, not Jason or Percy or Frank, while she was still coming down from the thrill of a first kill almost went wrong, getting her out before proceeding to teach her the finer intricacies involved in getting away without being detected.)_

It was always just a game, though. Playing with their hearts and their lives, before cutting the thread and ending it.

 _(It was fun, smiling shyly at them, giving them a hint of what they could have, luring them into bed – their bed, always. She loved the irony. It would be their deathbeds, after all. And, the looks on their wives' faces when they discover their husband's dead body, stripped bare and covered in hickeys, all the evidences there further incriminating them even without the note she'd leave for them to find… She always stayed the night, just for that, to see them understand, before slipping away, swallowed by the shadows.)_

It stayed just a game until she discovered her husband in their bed with another.

 _(Her heart shattered, and, it made sense for her to shatter it – it was poetic justice.)_

He was her third kill.

 _(She should have seen it coming, really - in the end, although her husband was the one who gave her the idea, he never understood, never believed. Perhaps there was a reason she occasionally found herself wondering why he would help her, and, in her darker moments, why he stayed in the first place when nobody worth it was willing to look at her and see her, not the praetor or the lost little girl she used to be.)_

The police officers who arrived were nice, gentle and kind. As they assisted her up and bundled her up, she didn't even have to pretend to be numb, to be in shock, to be grieving for her loss, because she was. Because it wasn't an act, because she did care, and.

 _(She'll never forget the relief on his face when she pulled him into their bed with her, telling her that she'd erase every trace of the other woman from him before muttering the sweet nothings that truly meant nothing now that she knew.)_

For a while, after him, she had fallen into a rut – she had truly loved him, after all. Still did, if she was honest with herself, but.

 _(The betrayal on his face when she dug the shard in and drew it along the median septum, breaking his heart by splitting it – it made her want to claw that look off his face. To yell and scream at him that he had no right to look like she had betrayed him, not when he was the one who betrayed her. He had no right, he was the one who broke her heart and killed her that night, all those promises and vows, their future, the plans, the games -)_

He lied.

 _(He deserved it.)_

It was staring at the shards on the floor that spurred her back into action.

 _(It would appear that she was wrong - they truly were razor sharp, able to cut her more deeply and leave her bleeding more freely than any other dagger could.)_

But she wouldn't toss them away, they were more than that. They were a reminder, swept into the locket she wouldn't take off now, next to her heartbeat where he'd always been, always will be.

 _(Broken hearts weren't the crippling things people told you they were, she realised – they were scalpels that cut away weaknesses, allowing you to unleash your potential to the fullest while shielding you with an armor of shards.)_

So she got back into the game, searching for weddings and dresses and driving there _(alone, alone, alone…)_ , except –

 _(He'd put a hammer to her heart and left behind only this: scalpel sharp pieces that sliced away the useless emotions he had taught her to feel.)_

It stopped being a game.

 _(It became an obsession.)_

She would really test them, she vowed. And if they fail, they'd truly deserve this.

 _(He taught her that it was good to be crazy.)_

Didn't he?

The games, the plans, the lies.

 _(Nico never liked him. "He'd break your heart one day, Reyna," he had said the first time she introduced them, after Sebastian left, leaving it the two of them in her living room._  
 _"He wouldn't," Reyna defended immediately. "He's a sweetheart."_  
 _Nico didn't reply.  
In the silence, she could hear the unspoken 'Alabaster was, too.')_

He never knew her, she realised.

Did she know him?

 _(She can't forget this either: his blood, mixing with the ones already staining her hands, immiscible and just another life she'd bear full responsibility for ending, like her father that first time she snapped.)_

It doesn't matter anymore, though, he's gone. Only the shards weren't.

 _(Nico wasn't, either, but he was the only one who stayed. Because, unlike the rest of them, he had this freakish ability to just know. It makes sense, she decided, since it does take one to know one after all. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry, though, and eventually she settled for drinking herself senseless in his company on the nights he wasn't called away by his father and his duty, because she could trust him to protect her from the world and to protect the world from her.)_

In the end, the only thing keeping them from killing her was the locket that contained them, heavy and warm against her heart.

 _(A constant reminder that no matter how good this feels, it would never compare, ever, but-)_

He lied.

 _(And he's gone.)_

* * *

 _AN: So, I thought about making this a 'verse, and making one from Nico's perspective. Hopefully to further clarify how they came to be this friendly and what really happened._

 _That's how fun it was to write this._  
 _And, as for how OoC Reyna may appear and the basis of her friendship with Nico - well, I found the duo to be truly interesting characters. They were both alone, really, and both had a sister that abandoned them (and died in the end), and both were just so screwed over by life that it's hard not to imagine them sticking together, you know._  
 _Besides that, it's my belief that Reyna crushed really hard on Jason, and isn't that just reminisce of the way Nico crushed on Percy :P and I think of them helping each other get over their golden boy, the hero that's just so far out of their league (they think) that it's laughable._  
 _And then there's the parent with way too high an expectation and constantly telling them that they're not good enough, not like their sisters, and is just permanently disappointed in them, and then they're both working so hard to earn that approval and in the end it's become a bit of us-against-the-world because honestly, there's no one else for them._  
 _Except for Leo, but even he got a happy-ever-after, didn't he?_  
 _(Not that I approve entirely of Caleo, but that was the canon. Oh, and Solangelo doesn't exist in this 'verse)_

 _On another note, I'm currently working on NaNoWriMo and my exams, as well as Deviation (truly inspired recently, even though I haven't made the plot into words yet) so it'd be a while before I come back with something._

 _Let me know what you think, and whether you'd like another character from this set!_


End file.
